Quasi-isotropic UV emission in the ULX NGC~1313~X--1

Abstract

A major prediction of most super-Eddington accretion theories is the presence of anisotropic emission from supercritical disks, but the degree of anisotropy and its dependency with energy remain poorly constrained observationally. A key breakthrough allowing to test such predictions was the discovery of high-excitation photoionized nebulae around Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs). We present efforts to tackle the degree of anisotropy of the UV/EUV emission in super-Eddington accretion flows by studying the emission-line nebula around the archetypical ULX NGC~1313~X--1. We first take advantage of the extensive wealth of optical/near-UV and X-ray data from \textit{Hubble Space Telescope}, \textit{XMM-Newton}, \textit{Swift}-XRT and \textit{NuSTAR} observatories to perform multi-band, state-resolved spectroscopy of the source to constrain the spectral energy distribution (SED) along the line of sight. We then compare spatially-resolved \texttt{Cloudy} predictions using the observed line-of-sight SED with the nebular line ratios to assess whether the nebula `sees' the same SED as observed along the line of sight. We show that to reproduce the line ratios in the surrounding nebula, the photo-ionizing SED must be a factor $\approx 4$ dimmer in ultraviolet emission than along the line-of-sight. Such nearly-iosotropic UV emission may be attributed to the quasi-spherical emission from the wind photosphere. We also discuss the apparent dichotomy in the observational properties of emission-line nebulae around soft and hard ULXs, and suggest only differences in mass-transfer rates can account for the EUV/X-ray spectral differences, as opposed to inclination effects. Finally, our multi-band spectroscopy suggest the optical/near-UV emission is not dominated by the companion star.

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